Vladimir Putin As long term readers of this blog will be aware, I have been concerned for some time with the misreporting and interference in the west with Russian cases. The Pussy Riot case is another example. There is in fact no great legal or political issue or principle involved in this case. Every society has to face occasional challenges to public order and that is all ultimately that the Pussy Riot case is about. It is not the malevolent prosecution by a corrupt dictatorship of harmless artists or political dissidents. Treating it as if it was not only completely misrepresents the case but has also seriously damaged the prospects of the three young women involved avoiding a lengthy prison sentence. To the extent that this is the case the fault lies not with Putin, the Russian state, the Russian Courts, the Russian Orthodox Church or the Russian police but with the women’s supporters both in Russia and the west. – MercourisDominant Social Theme: This man, this magnificent little man who fights tigers with his bare hands and dives deeply into the sea for diamonds, this leader of all that is Holy in Mother Russia, is now freedom’s strongest supporter. Alone among powerful people, he stands up to the West and its globalist adventures.Free-Market Analysis: Somehow the idea has got around the alternative media that Vladimir Putin is some sort of protector of the West from its own globalist elites. We ran into this again when we published an article entitled “Kim Dotcom Resists, Pussy Riot Protests and the Insane Clown Posse Sues … Internet Reformation Rolls.”
We received several emails (well, one, anyway) saying the reason for the Pussy Riot provocations and trial was to punish Putin for not backing the Western war against Syria. And for generally resisting “Western globalism.” We also spent some time over at Mercouris’s blog (see excerpt above).
Okay but hold on.Read MoreReality Check: The African Region that Western Elites have Subjected to War Is Now Larger than the Entire US

Monday, August 20, 2012 – by Staff Report

Syria Escalating violence and a vicious cycle of retaliation could leave Syria ungovernable even if a winner finally emerges from President Bashar al-Assad’s battle with rebels. Nearly a year and a half since the uprising erupted, initially as peaceful protests for reform, Assad’s forces and their insurgent foes are fighting a messy conflict with no frontline and scant regard for the rules of war. Assad has deployed air strikes and artillery to pound restive towns into submission, hitting civilian homes and hospitals. Rights groups say his forces have committed massacres. Rebels have shot or slit the throats of captured Assad supporters and hurled corpses off high buildings. – ReutersDominant Social Theme: Freedom is sweeping Africa and the Middle East thanks to the Twitter Revolution!Free-Market Analysis: Reuters (above) tells us the Syria conflict as it stands now will end in a bloody stalemate. We’re not sure that’s going to be the case given how Libya ended up, but the Reuters story, like the rest of reporting surrounding these various wars, fails to give the full scope of what is taking place, in our humble view.
What’s that? Well … the entire upper half of Africa from the Ivory Coast to Somalia has been set aflame with violence and war. The geographical scale is staggering.Read MoreThe Allure of Mandates

Monday, August 20, 2012 – by Tibor Machan

Dr. Tibor MachanPeter Coy of Bloomberg/Businessweek is an avid fan of mandates (see his “The Case for Way More Mandates” 7/9-7/15, 2012, p. 24). That is to say he prefers forcing people to do what he thinks they should do rather than persuading them, kind of like what the USSR’s rulers practiced routinely. (To mandate presupposes the capacity to impose one’s will! And governments are usually powerful enough to accomplish that. It amounts to coercing others, nothing nicer!)
The major argument given for mandates such as Mr. Obama’s preferred way to get people to insure their health care is that, well, by getting a lot of people to be part of the system, the cost of it all will not be as high as otherwise. And this is true for a while. If a lot of people are forced to eat at the restaurant I prefer, prices will be lower there. Higher demand for any goods or services leads to lower prices, indeed.
But this applies mainly to demand that is forthcoming voluntarily, not from having been mandated. Conscripting customers and clients may appear to be economical but only for a bit. In time people start finding ways to dodge conscription, like the military draft or the policies of dictatorships or tyrannies. All the energy devoted to such draft – i.e., mandate – dodging and its prevention goes to waste and that itself will turn out to be very costly.